1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a music interactive toy and/or educational tool. More particularly, the present invention relates to such toys and/or educational tools for teaching people of all ages to recognize, by sound and name, the musical notes of the scale.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Music plays a major role in the lives of most people. Music is often a universal language, allowing people who do not speak the same language to nevertheless communicate in one form or another. For many people, listening to music is an enjoyable, often relaxing exercise. However, while children are taught the basics of the speaking language (a, b, c, . . . ) and the numeric language (1,2,3, . . . ), very little, if any, emphasis is placed on the musical language (do, re, mi, . . . ). In fact, even musicians, while being extremely skilled at their particular instrument, sometimes have very little knowledge concerning the musical language. Many musicians learn to play by sound without ever associating musical notes with their given names (xe2x80x9cdoxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9crexe2x80x9d,xe2x80x9cmixe2x80x9d,xe2x80x9cfaxe2x80x9d,xe2x80x9csolxe2x80x9d,xe2x80x9claxe2x80x9d, and xe2x80x9ctixe2x80x9d).
But most people do not have the natural born talent to learn how to play an instrument without knowing the musical language. Thus, it would be extremely beneficial to begin teaching the musical scale and the names of the musical notes (i. e., xe2x80x9cdoxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9crexe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cmixe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cfaxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9csolxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9claxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9ctixe2x80x9d) to children at a relatively young age (even as young as under two years old), when their minds are the most receptive to new information. However, because most children have relatively short attention spans, any effective method of teaching the musical scale to children must hold their attention while simultaneously educating them.
A number of systems and aids have been proposed for teaching the musical scale to children. A form of such a device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,114,501 to Tanaka. That device includes plural dolls, each of which has a flexible bellows and a uniquely configured air chamber and air passageway to produce a unique noise in a particular pitch or tone. This device, however, provides no means for varying the sound output by the dolls to cater to different children""s interests in an effort to capture and hold their attention.
Another proposed device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,540,132 to Hale, and includes plural puppet characters that incorporate tonal devices such as battery powered electronic devices that emit a sound in a tone which corresponds to that of the musical note with which the puppet character is associated. The tonal device is housed inside the puppet and includes a pressure sensitive switch to activate it. This device also suffers from the shortcoming that there is no way to change the output format of the sound being generated depending on the person using the device.
Accordingly, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that there continues to be a need for an improved music teaching device for teaching people to distinguish musical notes by sound, sight and/or name simultaneously. Furthermore, there exists a need for such a music teaching device that is adaptable to the particular user of the device and to his or her interests. Also, the present invention teaches understanding the relative changes in pitch between the notes by visualizing these changes in a graduated increase in size of the colored dolls, corresponding to each note. The present invention addresses these needs and others,
Briefly, and in general terms, the present invention provides a music teaching device for teaching users to recognize particular notes by sound and for associating those notes with their musical names (xe2x80x9cdoxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9crexe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cmixe2x80x9d, etc.). The invention includes one or more sound generating devices operative to generate sound in a selected output format chosen from plural formats. The device provides an output format selector that allows a user to select the particular output format in which the sound will be generated. Upon selection of an output format and depression of a button corresponding with a particular pitch, the device retrieves from memory the corresponding sound bite in the format and pitch and audibly recreates the sound bite. At least one of the sound bites is the name of one of the notes; xe2x80x9cdoxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9crexe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cmixe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cfaxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9csolxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9claxe2x80x9d, and xe2x80x9ctixe2x80x9d.
Thus, the music teaching device of the present invention in one preferred embodiment comprises: plural playback buttons being manipulable to generate discrete playback signals; a memory device storing sound bites in plural pitches and in plural output formats; an output format selector with plural settings to determine the output format of the sound bite to be generated; a processor in electrical communication with the playback buttons, memory, and output format selector, the processor being responsive to manipulation of one of the buttons and setting of the output format selector to retrieve the corresponding sound bite from the memory; and a sound playback device in communication with the processor and operative to audibly reproduce the sound bite retrieved by the processor.
In an alternative embodiment of the present invention, the device includes figurines or dolls that are releasably mounted on a base unit. The dolls represent one note and the height of the dolls increase sequentially to correlate with its assigned note. Also, preferably, each doll is decorated in a particular color, with the three most dominant notes, xe2x80x9cdoxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cfaxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9csolxe2x80x9d being represented by the three most dominant colors yellow, blue and red, respectively. By coloring the dolls in accordance with yellow, blue and red, their importance within the scale, the dolls color correspond in domination sequence to the domination sequence of the notes.
In accordance with a further embodiment of the present invention, the device can create the sound bite in the basic terms of music, such as, for example, varying pitch (e.g., high, low), dynamic (e. g., piano, forte), rate or tempo (e. g., slow, fast), duration (e.g. beats per second), half-notes, etc.
Other features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings which illustrate, by way of example, the features of the present invention.